Tag Archive | "XP"

AVG anti-virus recently released an update to their virus definitions file which incorrectly detected a critical Windows file as being a Trojan horse program.

Both AVG 7.5 and 8.0 (free versions and pay versions) incorrectly identified “user32.dll” as being a malicious Trojan program called PSW.Banker4.APSA (according to their forum post).

AVG Forum Post

Depending on the configuration settings chosen for AVG, the detection could result in the removal of user32.dll and the inability to reboot the PC. User32.dll is a critical file which allows for API calls to the Windows Graphical User Interface. If the file is missing during boot, the computer will Blue Screen.

AVG released a follow-up signature update to correct the problem, but that solution only worked if the user had not turned off his PC, or rebooted it, after installing the buggy update and then deleting user32.dll.

Here is a quick way to add things to the “Send To” right click menu in Windows XP.

First let’s explain how this might be helpful.

Have you ever wanted to open a file that Windows didn’t know how to open? For instance, a text file that had a weird extension like .out or .dat. You could open it with Wordpad or Notepad, but Windows doesn’t recognize the extension so instead you have to double click on the file and choose what program to open it with. This can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes it can take you longer to open the file than to read the contents.

How about if you could just right click on the file and send it to Wordpad or Notepad? This works great for file types that your Windows XP OS doesn’t know about. For instance, I have a program that creates log files with a .output extension. I know they are text files, and if want to quickly look at them, I can just right click and send them to Wordpad. The file opens up normally and if I want to make edits or changes, I can do that too.

Would you like to easily put files in a folder that you frequent often? Right clicking the files and doing a “Send To”, instead of doing a copy and paste can save us some time.

Want something on the Desktop, why not send it there?

Customize the “Send To” menu is easy and can help make us a little more efficient.

To customize the “Send To” menu:

Click on the Start button, then on Run.

Type sendto in the box, and click OK.

The resulting folder that appears is where you add and remove items as you see fit. Try adding a shortcut to Notepad, Wordpad, or another of your favorite text editors. Also try adding a shortcut to a folder you copy things to a lot.

What other useful additions to the “Send To” menu have you found?

Vista Users:

Cut and past the following into the Vista search bar to customize the Sendto Menu